The study of Earth’s systems, including its physical structure, natural processes, and interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Earth sciences investigate phenomena such as weather, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions to understand our planet’s past, present, and future.
A new study from Utrecht University reveals that even in regions far from tectonic plate boundaries, dormant faults can still produce earthquakes. The research, published on October 15, 2025 in Nature Communications, explains how faults that have remained inactive for millions of years slowly “heal,” building up strength that is eventually released as a single induced earthquake.
An M7.7 earthquake struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, rupturing between 475–530 km (295–329 miles) of the Sagaing Fault, where a UCLA-led team found that the southern branch reached sustained supershear speeds approaching 5 km/s (3.1 miles/s).
Fragmented aurora-like emissions and picket fence structures were simultaneously observed over northern Scandinavia during a geomagnetic storm on January 1, 2025, marking the first recorded coexistence of these two rare phenomena within auroral latitudes. The discovery adds to the growing understanding that Earth’s upper atmosphere is far more dynamic than once thought, with electric-field structures that can stretch over thousands of kilometres but reorganize in seconds.
An intense earthquake swarm shook the Santorini–Amorgos region of Greece beginning on January 27, 2025, lasting about 45 days and producing more than 16 000 tremors between 5–15 km (3–9 miles) below the seafloor. A joint seismological study has revealed that the 2025 Santorini crisis was not a typical tectonic swarm. It was the signature of magma moving through a hidden corridor connecting the Santorini and Kolumbo volcanoes, two of the most active systems in the eastern Mediterranean.
A new study published recently in Geosphere finds that some of the largest earthquakes along the Cascadia subduction zone may have triggered nearly simultaneous ruptures on California’s San Andreas fault. The discovery suggests that the “really big one” in the Pacific Northwest could cascade southward, affecting much of the U.S. West Coast in a single sequence.
A solidified magma body formed about 15 million years ago beneath Japan’s Noto Peninsula may have intensified the M7.6 earthquake that struck the region at 16:10 JST (07:10 UTC) on January 1, 2024, according to a Science Advances study by Tohoku University. The ancient magma appears to have trapped stress below the crust until its failure triggered one of Japan’s strongest inland quakes in decades.
A new study in Geophysical Research Letters published on October 21, 2025, shows that most shear wave splitting in Alaska’s subduction zone originates inside the sinking slab itself, overturning the long-held view that mantle flow is the main cause.
A study in Geophysical Journal International introduces a Radiation Boundary inversion algorithm that accelerates three-dimensional magnetotelluric modelling, producing sharper, faster images of Earth’s crust and mantle across continental scales.
A machine-learning model developed by Stanford University and Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology has uncovered more than 54 000 earthquakes and a sharply defined ring-fault system beneath Campi Flegrei, Italy, between January 2022 and March 2025, according to a study published recently in Science.
A newly dated medieval tsunami between 1381 and 1391 CE struck Anegada, the northernmost of the British Virgin Islands, when an M8.0 or greater earthquake ruptured the Puerto Rico Trench, according to an open-access study published in Geophysical Research Letters on October 8, 2025.
